On this day 55 years ago, July 20, 1969, the United States made history by successfully landing a human being on the Moon.
To most of us alive today, the Apollo 11 mission is just a fact of life, but it was no simple feat. It took nearly a decade of coordination and mobilization on an unprecedented scale.
It was the result of millions of combined hours of effort by hundreds of thousands of Americans—everyone from the astronauts who took one small step for a man to the engineers who built the rockets to the mathematicians who calculated the flight paths to the custodial staff, caterers, and nurses who did the day-to-day work of keeping NASA running.
And it wasn’t a political guarantee either. Public opinion on the Apollo program was sharply divided throughout the 1960s, and lots of questions were raised by well-meaning people about whether it was really the best use of American funding and manpower.
But our leaders knew that our country is at its best when we are united and working toward a common goal.
Because the moon landing was about more than just winning the space race. It was a massive jobs program. It was a massive research and development program. We owe much of our modern world to technological innovations developed for the Apollo program. And at a time of significant national unrest, it unified Americans from coast to coast and showed the world—and ourselves—that America is a nation that does great things.
Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine that the America of today would be able to pull that off. We’re as divided as we’ve ever been. Extreme inequality has driven a wedge between neighbors and polarized our politics. Even the absolutely transformational Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the biggest and most necessary investment in American infrastructure in a decade, barely passed Congress by the skin of its teeth.
But I believe that we can chart a better path. I believe we can find our generation’s Apollo 11. I believe that what unites us is stronger than what divides us, we just need to find the way.
We set a goal, we invested in it, and we put a man on the freaking Moon. And if we come together and put our minds to it, I know we can be a nation that does great things again.
But it starts by electing leaders who are willing to invest in our people. And to do that, this campaign needs your support.
